Bangladesh: Where the tigers stalk

In the wetlands of Bangladesh, man-eaters still terrorise villages. William Gray prays to Banobibi, godess of the Suburbans, before he takes a boat into big cat territory

12:00AM GMT 02 Jan 1999

I COULD not have hoped for a better omen. As if springing an ambush, the tiger's eyes burned vivid yellow against the smouldering orange of its fur. As the cycle-rickshaw drew nearer, I could see the intricate painting on the vehicle's side more clearly - the tiger, shoulders bunched, poised for action; a group of deer, tense and alert; the forest, a mysterious tangle of trees and ferns.

I identified the scene immediately. It was the Sundarbans - Asia's great wetland wilderness; a vast mangrove forest half the size of Wales, sprawling across the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta. It was also the setting for my safari - a riverboat journey in search of the most beautiful and endangered of the big cats.

I had flown from Dhaka to Khulna, a boisterous city in south-west Bangladesh, where I was due to meet my guide, Zillur Rahman. I hailed the tiger rickshaw and was soon weaving through the streets of Khulna, reeling from the blast of horns and belch of diesel fumes.

"Today Banobibi, the goddess of the Sundarbans, gives us her beauty to enjoy." A reverential fervour squeezed Zillur's voice. For a few minutes we sat in silence in the cool, quiet haven of his house and invoked the blessing of Banobibi. Only foolhardy travellers venture into tiger territory without seeking protection from the Mother of the Forest.

From Khulna, we headed south by minibus, threading through a mosaic of rice paddies and taro plots, before reaching Mongla, on the banks of the half-mile-wide Pusur river.

The moment we stepped from the minibus, we were assailed by vendors offering peanuts, Pepsi, bananas and betel nut. We stocked up for the journey ahead, carefully avoiding the eye of a mobile ear surgeon - a doddery old man with an unnerving squint and a grisly array of probing tools. Zillur handed me an opened coconut with a straw in the top, and we walked down to the ghat, or landing steps, where a small wooden motorboat was waiting for us.

Much of Bangladeshi life revolves around the riverbank - the ghat was all colour and activity. Brightly painted boats, from Venetian-like punts to tolars, or motorised passenger vessels, crowded the landing area. A group of boys spurred a reluctant herd of skinny cattle into the river for an early-morning dip, while women in red, green and gold saris filled brass coloshes with water.

Looming in the distance, a string of ocean-going freighters rode at anchor along the river's deep-water channel. Despite being 55 miles inland, Mongla has a thriving international port. Beneath the towering, rusty hulls, the river's surface was peppered with hundreds of bright blue fishing nets, each one tended by a man in a narrow, open boat. Zillur said they were catching baby shrimps.

There was something disturbing about having to pass through such an industrial gateway to reach the World Heritage Site of the Sundarbans, but three miles south of Mongla, we slipped into pure, natural oblivion. Nosing in and out of narrow tidal creeks, a chaos of mangrove trees, ferns and palms made a thick green maze.

We began to see tantalising glimpses of wildlife - a flash of turquoise as a kingfisher skimmed the surface; a reptilian twitch as a monitor lizard scuttled for cover. Then, rounding a bend, there was a sudden commotion in the treetops. Rhesus monkeys! Zillur could barely contain himself.

"Slow, slow," he called urgently to Mustafa at the helm, and then: "Turn around. Fast, fast!" when the current swept us past the tree where we had seen them feeding. We stared hard at the riverbank, but the monkeys had vanished.

"Follow me," Zillur said, rolling up his trouser-legs, and he slipped over the side of the boat, as stealthy as a commando.

At first, the mud underfoot was firm and slick, like potter's clay, and each step reduced me to a windmill of gangly limbs. But then it turned nasty. I was halfway between our boat and the mangrove forest when my left leg was swallowed up to the knee. There was a vulgar squelchy noise and the mud breathed a triumphant sigh of sulphur. Fiddler crabs backed nervously into their burrows.

This is it, I'm stuck. Any moment now, a royal Bengal tiger will leap out of the forest, swat me with a plate-sized paw and carry me away in its jaws. The tide will come in and wash the mudflat clean and a week later, a fisherman will discover my floppy sunhat floating in the Bay of Bengal, 50 miles to the south . . .

With these thoughts concentrating my efforts, I extracted my leg from the mud and hobbled after Zillur across a tangle of arching mangrove roots. As we stole into the the dappled light beneath the trees, a calm, green cocoon enveloped us.

"Sundarbans is Bengali for 'beautiful forest'," whispered Zillur, his eyes wide as he scanned the canopy for telltale signs of the monkey. For two decades, Zillur has studied this little-known wilderness and its rare wildlife. His heart is in the forest.

"Look, deer tracks." Zillur pointed to a trail of neat slots weaving across a clearing.

"What kind of deer?" I asked.

"Chital. Maybe 30,000 live in the Sundarbans."

"Will we see one?"

"No. They are very afraid."

"Of us?"

"Yes. And tigers."

Tigers. Just the mention of the word set my scalp tingling. I became like a creature of the forest: vulnerable, alert, wonderfully alive. I saw danger lurking in every shadow. One careless step on a brittle leaf and I would betray myself.

"Zillur." My voice was barely a whisper, but it sent shock waves through the humid, still air. "There are no tigers in this part of the forest, are there?"

He shook his head slowly, a silver bead of sweat quivering from his chin. "In all the years I've been coming here, I have only seen two tigers - far to the south, deep in the Sundarbans. Here, only their spirits remain."

Zillur explained that the chances of encountering a tiger on our day-trip safari were virtually nil. Only 350 of the great cats survive in the Bangladesh Sundarbans - a tenth of the world population of Bengal tigers.

"Each year, they are pushed deeper and deeper into the forest," he said.

"By poachers?"

"Poachers, yes. And loggers, cattle-herders, honey-collectors, fishermen - hundreds of thousands of people exploit the Sundarbans. Now there are more human footprints here than animal ones."

Back on the boat, I asked Zillur if Mustafa had ever seen a tiger. A brief exchange in Bengali took place and I saw Mustafa shake his head.

"No. And he says it would be very bad if we did see one, because they are strong swimmers and his boat is only small."

As we headed south towards tiger country, I hauled aboard a bucket of river water to wash the mud from my feet and legs - but the fine silt had embedded itself in the pores of my skin.

We rejoined the Pusur river and by early afternoon, reached the fishing village of Chandpai, a cluster of thatched huts on a cleared mud bank, 12 miles south of Mongla. A crowd gathered at the wooden jetty as we drew near - badeshis, or foreigners, still create great curiosity in rural parts of Bangladesh. Zillur and I were led to a wooden tea house which soon became packed with onlookers. Two stainless-steel beakers of hot, sweet cha were placed on the table in front of us and the conversation turned to tigers.

"This is a very dangerous village," Zillur interpreted for me. "Just a few weeks ago, a tigress swam across the river." He paused and turned back to a man at the front of the gathering - he was the owner of a local fish business and had assumed the role of a spokesman.

"Six cattle were attacked in one night," Zillur relayed to me. "The boy looking after them tried to chase the tigress away."

"How?"

More animated discussion.

"With sticks."

The spokesman curled the fingers of his right hand into a claw and made a slashing motion across his thigh. For the outcome of the boy's brave challenge, no translation was needed.

I learned that in the past four years, eight people from the village had been killed by tigers. Despite protected status and a lengthy prison sentence for killing them, the man-eaters were tracked down and shot. It wasn't resentment that drove the villagers to flout the law. Their rationale was straightforward.

"They say the tiger is very special," Zillur explained. "It is beautiful and very rare and lives here in Bangladesh. It is their pride, you see, their national animal. But what can they do? They are poor and receive no compensation for their dead cattle. They say they must protect their livelihoods."

We began our return journey to Mongla on a full tide, the river bloated with silt-saturated water that lapped against the mangroves. At one point, a Ganges river dolphin surfaced ahead of the boat, its shiny pink back briefly parting the coffee- coloured water.

The long line of freighters began to loom ahead, silhouettes against the amber of the setting sun. Gradually, the forest dissolved into the clutter of Mongla's ramshackle suburbs, makeshift jetties and rusting oil drums, and the Sundarbans faded from view.